> That's a bit misleading. Many of those "foreigners" were born in Germany.
> Sometimes even their parents were born in Germany. In America, we'd call
> them Americans.
Be careful of that "we". *Some* US citizens would call them Amis; others would like to deport or jail them. One of the most heartening things about the nascent Euroleft is its uncompromising support for open borders, asylum rights and the freedom of movement -- rights which Eurocapital would like to monopolize for itself, if it could get away with it.
> And there was an epochal change in the citizenship law a few years ago
> that will bear fruit in about 19 years.
Sooner that that. The bar for citizenship was lowered from living 15 years in Germany to 8, and naturalization has become a lot easier. Germany isn't quite as tolerant as some of the other Euro cultures, but the change since the mid-1990s is extraordinary. The new EU constitution will drive a further set of changes, probably in five or six years.
-- Dennis